


Mangoes

by Chaifootsteps



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Agender Character, Coming Out, Gen, POV Second Person, Rivain, Rivaini People, Siblings, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 09:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6653050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaifootsteps/pseuds/Chaifootsteps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stolen fruit, Circle life, and the inevitable passing of ships. The Commander of the Grey through the eyes of the one who knew him best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mangoes

Your sister was three years older than you, except for those few important weeks in Nubulis when she was only two.

She had eyes like your mother’s, hair that reached past her waist, and always carried around a little knife with porpoises cut into the handle. 

Back then, you couldn’t imagine anything more impressive than owning a little knife with porpoises cut into the handle.

On the road leading down to the beach, not quite halfway, there was an old mango tree that always bloomed  _just_ around the start of the dry season, when clouds of dust rose up in lieu of the rain. More often than not, when your chores were finished and your share of the communal garden's tending behind you, you’d make tracks for the shore together. Each time, she would pull the ripe fruit off the heavy hanging bough, toss you one too. You would carry a few in the hems of your shirts to eat by the water. 

They ran like flood rains when you bit into them. She was the one who taught you how to catch some of that syrup in the upturned mango skins so that you could drink it afterwards.

“How did you learn that?” you asked, somewhere between awestruck and suspicious.

“I eat a lot of mangoes.”

* * *

 

You were free range children in the most comfortable sense of the word – children who’d learned to read and write both Rivaini and Trade, learned history, learned to figure numbers, and now it was just a matter of waiting for your magical talents to emerge. Any time she let you trail along behind her and her walking stick was a good day, and you never felt more grown up than when the two of you ambled down to the market, dodging long legs and the tails of robes and stroking the goats whenever their owners looked away. To say nothing of when the stall keepers actually recognized the two of you.

“Madam Samira’s grandchildren, yes? How is your mother? Your sister? Good!”

And they’d give you triangles of warm, brown sugar-spice to suck on while you walked.

If she was not taking clients or in the Fade that day, you would oftentimes wander down and visit your grandmother. She would feed you whatever she’d baked that week and forbid you from getting older. Loyalty would emerge and let you ask it questions about life beyond the Veil.

This was without question your sister’s favorite place to be, but the beach was yours. It always had been.

You would swim. She wouldn’t. You’d yell about seaweed, she’d roll up her pant legs and stuff her pockets with beach glass. Both of you would tear through the crowds of scolding gulls, shouting muted profanity.

You’d run home before the sun would set, bare feet pounding the hard brown soil, keenly aware that the Very Tall Man visited children who stayed out past dark.

You hold on tightly as you can to those days, when he was the only thing you had to be afraid of.

 

* * *

 

You learned the boundaries that came in the form of miles; Andrastians to the west, elves to the east, Qunari always walking the streets.You learned the less tangible ones that separated black from bronze from white from steel gray. You learned that the genocide against your people was a knitting wound manifest in the rough memorials set up along the roads and in the middle of forests, and even before you learned what they meant and why you shouldn’t climb on them, you loved them every bit as much as you loved Rivain’s sweet rice and steel pans.

And that was Rivain in your eyes. Music, dancing, and the never ending myriad of ways a thing could taste sweet. A contradiction, but mostly a buzzing, beating heart that refused to be quieted, nor anything less than alive.      

Your home. Your blue and green corner of creation.       

Your world.

 

* * *

 

 Your father made daggers, your mother made potions. You remember your sister arguing with them both.

“Just because your magic hasn’t shown itself yet is no excuse. You still have to work hard. You can’t just run around playing in the woods like you do.”

Sometimes they would shout, and sometimes she would shout back. Sometimes they would threaten to keep her in the house, which she hated more than anything. Sometimes she would grab her stick and head out the door anyway.

“Want to come with me?” she would sometimes ask.

And you always did.

One of these days, the fighting was worse than it had ever been. It was always bad when Marisol’s name came up, but this time they’d called her some things even you suspected they couldn’t take back. She didn’t speak the entire walk down to the water, her shoulders knotted like fists, and did not cool until the shore was in sight. You watched her cut mangoes in the late afternoon sun.

“If your magic comes, will you have to go live at the Circle?” You asked this question often, each time hoping the answer would be different.

“I imagine so.”

“...Will _I?_ ”

“Yes. But don’t worry...they let you come home to visit, and when you’ve learned enough, they’ll sometimes turn you loose.”

“Marisol and Taurai got to leave, but they didn’t come back.”

For some reason, you thought she might like to hear that.

“Yes, well. Marisol and Taurai are happy enough where they are.”

The skins made a slick noise as she pulled them back, dividing up the golden slivers between the two of you. You nibbled, but didn’t bite down.

“Why do they even have to go to the Circle? Can’t they learn magic at home?”

“Because the Templars are frightened of shadows. It makes them angry that our Circle allows people to go home _at all,_ so they walk around with their grimy hands down all our breeches.”

You were only seven, but you’d already known the real answer to that question. Didn’t matter. Hearing her go off on Templars always made you roll around on the sand, laughing until your chest hurt. 

Eventually, it made her smile, too.

That was just fine with you.

 

* * *

 

“Do you remember when you used to be scared of Qunari?”

_“No.”_

You did.

 “I wasn’t _scared_ of them.” 

You still are, sometimes.

Your sister was already snickering. “Oh, yes you were! I remember the time I tried to take you to the market to buy us coconut ice. We were halfway there, then all of a sudden a pair of Qunari came walking up the path. And you cried so hard we had to turn around and go home.”

“I was _little!_ Babies cry at things when they’re little!”

You were four. It was three years ago. 

You distinctly recall eating coconut ice at _some_ point, but moreso an ever present, stomach-rending terror that the Qunari, who sewed their mages' lips shut and kept them in chains, would come to your house and do the same to you.

You remember that after she’d brought you back home, after she’d stopped stewing over the lost coconut ice, your sister had come and sat by you.

_(’Don’t ever be scared in front of them. Okay? Don't let them scare you. We were here first.’)_

 

* * *

 

You can’t remember when exactly, but at some point, you learned that “your” tree had an owner. Recently deceased. An older man who’d always known you were picking fruit from it, but reasoned that there was more than he could ever realistically hope to eat. 

“That was kind of him,” your mother had told you both. 

You’d loudly asked how he died. Your sister had carried on eating her rice.

The weather had been wet that year. That coming dry season, the mangoes grew higher on the tree than they usually did, and the boughs didn’t sag the way they you were used to. Undeterred, your sister clambered up into the branches and started tossing them down to you.

It was then that you saw the figure standing up over the hill. Long, blue dress. Tattoos visible even from this distance.

“Samira?” you warned anxiously. No answer.  _“Samira?_ ”

No answer. And then...

_“Oh, shit!”_

She hit the ground hard just as the woman was starting down the hill towards you, shouting that you weren't supposed to be touching those. The next thing you knew, the two of you were flying down the path, shirts stuffed to overflowing with mangoes.

You both agreed that they were the best you’d ever tasted.

 

* * *

 

The year you turned nine was the year you learned to swim out past the big grey rock in the harbor. Your family acquired a little house bird that flew in from the forest and called for crumbs early in the morning. The market place stopped selling those buns you loved so dearly. 

Your sister cut her hair.

When she went out and bought the sword -- an old, beautiful thing she had to hold with both hands -- you were almost hurt that you hadn’t known about it sooner. She had to have been saving up for months. 

“I may as well. It’s clear I’m never going to be a mage.”

“You might.”

“I won’t.”

She didn’t seem to mind, though. Not with the way she kept adjusting that sword on her back, the same way she used to carry kittens between your house and the garden. Like she was afraid it might be uncomfortable there.

“You should hunt dragons with it,” you said. It’s what you would have done if you had a sword. 

“I should, shouldn’t I? Perhaps I will. Perhaps I’ll hollow out a dragon corpse and live in it all my days.” 

“...Does this mean I can have your knife?”

She pushed you away with her foot.

 

* * *

 

After that, your sister started spending more and more time by the docks. She told you about the lessons she was taking, and how she was paying for them by sweeping up shavings and stoking fires, but for once you couldn’t find it in you to be interested. You were too busy fretting over your own magic making an appearance. You warred between excitement over meeting a spirit and the terror that you assumed walking the Fade would bring.

“It’s not frightening at all,” your mother promised. “Strange, but no stranger than any other place you’re new to. And you can easily wake yourself up if you have to.” 

You still asked her to check on you in the night. She said she would.

More than once, you asked your grandmother how to tell a spirit from a demon. Her advice was always the same.

“Little one, it’s just like with anything else in this world. Someone comes to you offering something that sounds too good to be true, you run.”

 

* * *

 

Your magic had not shown by the time you turned eleven, but the mango tree was heavier than you could ever remember it being. You could smell its perfume long before you saw it. It was almost unthinkable that your sister would not be there to share it with you. 

And you tried so very hard _not_ to think of it.

“We’re just sailing to Treviso and back,” she said as you shared one last haul together -- carefully secured when the lady in blue wasn’t around. “I’ll be home long before the mangoes rot.”

That reassured you, but only a little. 

“You’ll be in _Antiva_ , though. Antiva’s a place where people go to smoke flowers and girls go to get pregnant.”

“ _You're_ pregnant.”

She was harder since she’d started training with the sword, the muscles of her arms defined. She _looked_ like she could protect a ship from pirates, and you didn’t see any reason -- beyond missing out on mango season and the yearly festivals -- why she shouldn’t. Fourteen seemed very old to you.

Out of the blue, it dawned on you that your own grandfather had perished at sea. That sometimes people just did.

"...Samira?”

“Mm?”

“I’m...” the words faded in your throat. You picked at a stray thread on your shirt until they returned. “...I’m going to miss you.”

“You’re also a terrible sap,” she said without missing a beat. You were so close to being cut by that, so terribly cut... “But I’ll miss you too.”

 

* * *

 

From the very beginning, you'd been paranoid about your magic manifesting in your sleep and setting something on fire. The prospect had always worried your sister, if only because it had actually happened to your older brother.

But when the moment came for you, it was all surprisingly convenient. You’d been carrying water to the little yam plants, did not even notice the way your hands were warming, warming -- 

And just that suddenly, your lifelines danced with flame. You’d shrieked and snuffed them out painlessly in the dirt.

The Templars did not come, as you’d always feared, with chains in hand. Your parents walked you to the Circle, stopping by your grandmother’s house so she could put a charm around your neck and tell you how proud she was of you. Offer promises to raze the place if anyone bullied you. 

Your sister was at sea at the time. That was just as well.

You wouldn’t have wanted her to see the way you cried when they left you.

 

* * *

 

Cold stone. Warm quilts. 

Books on the part Rivaini mages played when Andoral woke. Books on blood magic imported from the far west, every word sounding vaguely like an accusation. 

Some of your teachers had walked the very beaches you used to walk, while others spoke in accents you couldn’t place.

No spells yet, they told you. Theory first, then practice.

Everything in time.

 

* * *

 

The night the storm came in, you swore the building shook to its very foundation.

Unseasonable, First Enchanter Rivella had called it. A pirate killer, said the older apprentices.

You thought of your sister out on the water. You thought of your parents in their small, fragile little home, and the garden shielded up against the high winds, and your grandmother, whose job it was to see storms coming.

When you finally managed to sleep, the air around you was charged. Like standing waist deep in a river, palms just barely resting against the surface. When you moved, it moved around you, and the tips of your fingers felt cool and light.

You didn’t have to be told, then.

You knew.

In what little time you’d spent at the Circle, they’d given you the impression that the Fade was crawling with spirits, but you seemed to be completely alone. And though you’d spent the better part of your life dreaming of the day you were free to speak with spirits unsupervised, that was alright with you.

You walked on a ways before it occurred to you that it might be interesting to be a bird.

So you bent your own shape around yourself until you weren’t _quite_ a bird and you weren’t _quite_ a human, but you were small and light and free. You wheeled away into the drawn butter sky, laughing and laughing. 

And for the first time in memory, completely unafraid.

 

* * *

 

The mangoes would be all but gone by the time your sister returned. If you thought her muscles were prominent before, you were sorely mistaken. Every inch of her was solid now, hard-earned, shaped and cut and battered by the sea itself.

“So...what does this mean? Can I still call you Samira?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” she replied. Your heart sank. 

“Then it’s really true. You aren’t my sister anymore.”

“I never _was_ your sister. You had a brother all along, and it simply took us this long to realize it.” 

It was one of those things that was shrugged off in Rivain, but to you it was injustice...the greatest you’d ever known. She’d come home smelling like cloves, hung up her sword, and pulled you in so hard you thought your ribs would break. You were sitting on the beach together now, eating mangoes like you used to, and it wasn’t  _fair._ You’d just gotten her back.

You didn’t  _want_ to say good-bye.

So you hunched over bitterly, hugging your knees. “I liked you better when you were my sister.”

It was over the line and you damn well knew it. She drew a slow, slow breath, but when she spoke, there was still a slight edge to her voice. If it had been anyone but you, it wouldn’t have been slight at all.

“Look at this way, Vin. It’s like these mangoes. We pulled them off that tree for years without ever suspecting they belonged to anyone. Correct? We just assumed the tree was there for the taking. It wasn’t, but learning we were wrong hardly reaches back in time and erases all of that.”

“But that’s _different!_ ”

“Is it?”

“ _Yes!_ Nothing actually changed with the stupid tree. The tree’s still there. We’re still eating mangoes, right now!”

“Correct. And you’ve still got me.”

You blinked. 

“...Oh.” Three seconds, two, one. You blinked again.  _“Ohhh!”_ He smiled.Not quite cocky, the way he usually smiled, but certainly very satisfied. “...Sorry.”

“Quite alright.”

"So...what should I call you now?”

You’ll never forget the way his eyes shone as he told you.

 

* * *

 

Your parents asked if he was sure, then philosophically accepted the matter. Your mother, who hadn’t said a word when his magic never came, hugged him for a very long time.

With coin in his pocket and the weight off of his shoulders, your brother was happier than you could ever remember seeing him.

Since the rainy days had come by then, you traded in conversational mangoes for cups of ginger-laden tea taken by the windowsill. He told you about the time the crew was certain they’d heard sirens ( _"And then we all dove off the boat and died...what? I **am** telling you the real ending! That is so what happened!"_ ) and you told him about your adventures in the Fade.

“It’s _amazing!_ ” you gushed in a whisper. “You can be anything. You can _do_ anything! It’s just like...alright, if you could be any animal, what would you pick?”

He thought for a moment. “Griffon.”

“You could turn into a griffon just by _thinking_ about it! It’s not like dreaming at all, you decide what happens, and it’s easy!  _Oh!_  And did I tell you about the night I walked up the waterfall? Did I tell you about the waterfall _at all?”_

He didn’t know that any of this was unusual for a mage to be experiencing. At the time, neither did you. It all worked out nicely that way.

In the end, those last days you spent together were gentle ones.

 

* * *

 

Word traveled fast among the Seers, and so it was that word of the Wardens came to your village. Just a small band of them heading up to Dairsmuid. Intending to pick over the selection of mages, most likely. 

Your mother called it a shameful thing. Your father had no opinion either way.

That is, until your brother said that he would like to try and meet with them.

“No. Not a chance. Not anytime, but not at sixteen years old.”

“You were _married_ at sixteen.”

“And do you plan on marrying the Wardens?” It had been meant as a joke, but Ain’s jaw had gone tense as wire.

“If I were a mage, they would have been getting me ready for my Harrowing. I might have already taken it. You’re saying it’s alright to face down a demon at sixteen, but not to speak to the Wardens?” And your mother had cut him down in four small words, without even looking up from her food.

“ _You're_  not a mage.”

The chicken turned to ash in your mouth, but Ain had said nothing. He just pushed his tea away to grow cold and calmly strode out of the room.

But when he came to you that night, you were not surprised to learn that it was good-bye.

“You could wait a day or two,” you offered. “You could wait and see if they come further south. You can ask them then.” But your brother had only shaken his head.

“If I don’t leave now, they’ll be long gone. And they won’t be back.”

They said that a Warden’s life was tragically short, and that many didn’t even survive the initiation. You knew it; Ain must have known it better than anyone. For the first time, he told you he loved you.

You told him you loved him too.

One last time, you followed close to his heels. From room to room, silent as he gathered the last of his things, then out the front door and to the end of the wooden porch that was older than either of you. And there you stood, waving good-bye to one another even as the path grew smaller and the forest grew thicker.

Until they surrounded him, embraced him, and took him away. 

 

* * *

 

Your parents were furious, to say the least. Furious at each other, at you for not telling them. When they learned that he’d visited your grandmother, and that -- rather than sending him on home -- she had given him her ring, extra food, and the name of someone in Dairsmuid who would give him a bed, they were furious at her as well.

For a while, they were also hopeful. The Wardens only accepted the best of the best, after all...there was no way they would take in a teenager who’d run four days to get there. You were hopeful too, and it felt like you were betraying him in some small way by being so.

When the letter came, it opened with an apology. Not for leaving, not even for leaving like a thief in the night, but that this had all turned out the way it had. 

He was heading out with the Wardens in the morning, he said. He’d write you all as soon as he could. 

_P.S. The parcel’s for you, Vin. Try not to use it on anyone who doesn’t deserve it._

You hadn't needed to look to know, but you had all the same. Sure enough, there it was, folded up neatly in skin.

You ran your thumb over the smallest porpoise, and the windblown waves carved beneath it, and tried to recall why you'd wanted it in the first place.

  

* * *

 

That afternoon, you walked slowly along the road and picked a few mangoes. Peeled and ate them alone as the sea birds wheeled overhead and the sand turned from cool grey to copper.

It wasn’t the same, of course.

You hadn’t expected it would be.

 

* * *

 

Somehow, you were sixteen years old. The same age your brother had been when he left home.

The Circle had offered you the chance to study in Orlais -- possibly for the sake of putting you _somewhere_ while they figured out just what to do with you-- and left the courtesy of explaining to you just what that entailed to the Orlesians. If not for the chance to see him again, it was unlikely you would have agreed at all.

But there you stood on the cobbled streets, clutching your bag close, not nearly far enough removed from the grotesque masks they all wore. The smell of fresh bread was almost oppressive, a thing you never thought was possible, and you wondered just what in gods' names you were even supposed to _say_ to one another. 

After all, they called him the Warden-Lieutenant now. He'd led groups into the Deep Roads and back.

You'd never told him what they called you.

“Vin?”

You turned. And there he was.

Taller and broader, blue and silver armor all the way up to his throat, but so unmistakably your brother that you turned, called his name back to him, and ran the rest of the way until the resulting collision nearly knocked you both off your feet. If the nobles ever stared, which they almost certainly did, you never noticed.

 _“Look at you!”_ he laughed, the two of you hugging roughly in the middle of the street. There was a Rivaini tattoo around his right eye, curved like a wyvern’s claw; you remembered him mentioning it in his letters. Despite all your misgivings, despite all the travel and all the Orlesians eyeing you suspiciously, despite _everything,_ the inside of your chest was all ringing bells. “When did you go and get taller than me?!”

“When did _you_ have straight hair?!”

The _‘why’_ was unspoken, but perhaps it didn’t matter. In that moment, nothing did. You’d long since accepted that the two of you would never be the same again.

By the time you ate mangoes on the beach again, neither would Rivain.


End file.
